I’m pretty sure this is the future of television, actually. Won’t be on DVD or any other physical medium; it’ll be delivered to your future-TiVo-style-device via broadband.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I expect it’ll work something like this (using current-ish shows as an example):
“New series — Lost! From the makers of Alias. Tonight’s premiere is free! You can order the next three episodes for fifteen dollars, or you can commit to the whole season for fifty. Five dollar discount for ABC Network members.”
“New series — Bones! First two episodes are free. The next five episodes are twenty dollars, or you can commit to the whole season for thirty-five.”
“Survivor returns with a brand-new season! See what happens in Detroit! Available only as a whole season, for sixty dollars.”
“It’s the return of The Planet’s Funniest Animals with Matt Gallant! We’ll have twenty new installments this year. You can get them in blocks of five, at six dollars each, or the full run for twenty dollars.”
“That’s right, after sixty-twelve years, Friends is finally wrapping up its run. The full season will eighty dollars, and if you wait until the very end like a dumbass, the closing show by itself will be twenty. Act now!”
“Kicking yourself for missing out on the Lost phenomenon? Act now and you can catch up on the first four episodes for just ten dollars, and then add the rest of the season for another forty-five!”
Or whatever.
Get the idea? New shows have to give something away to hook viewers; lower-profile or lower-budgeted shows can’t charge as much. On the other hand, known hits won’t have to do anything for free.
There’ll be additional tiers for recent-but-not-immediately-current shows, like the first season of Monk, and I suppose some programs will be free on the future equivalent of TVLand, like Andy Griffith and Brady Bunch or whatever, with ads. (Or CGI inserts of product placement; the Fonz’s jacket might have a Planet Hollywood logo on it.)
I don’t know how the news will work. Time-based subscription, maybe, rather than per-episode. Like a newspaper crossed with CNN.
But yeah, the point is, this is where I think we’re headed.
And combining this with the question in the OP, I would have paid upwards of a hundred bucks a season to keep Firefly on the air. Doing some extrapolation: They had around 3 million regular viewers, I seem to recall. Cut that by a tenth to eliminate the non-serious fans, and multiply 300,000 by $100: that’s $30 million, or about $1.4 million per show. Doesn’t cover the $2-million-plus-per-episode budget, but it gives you an idea of what the market will bear. And maybe then the creator knows how much they can actually spend on the show, given what they’re actually earning. There’s a problem here in the financial model, in that you have to have half a dozen shows actually completed before you know how much you’re going to make back, but it does provide some pretty concrete feedback.
And Lost and Desperate Housewives would be rolling in money, wouldn’t they?